Thursday, October 31, 2013

Judicial Service lauded for its specialised courts

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Six of the participants sitting (from left) are Sir Justice Dennis
Adjei, Mrs Justice Margaret Welbourne, both of the Court of Appeal; Mr
Justice Dotse; Mr Justice Promad Kumar of the Income Tax Appellate Court
of India; Mr Justice Samuel Marful Sau, also of the Court of Appeal,
and Mr Mike Kofi Afflu, President of the Chartered Institute of
Taxation, Ghana

October 10, 2013 (Page 56)

A justice of the Income Tax Appellate
Tribunal of India, Mr Justice Promad Kumar, has commended the Judicial
Service for setting up specialised courts in the country.
Specialised courts currently in operation in the country include the
Commercial, Financial, Land, Labour, Human Rights and Domestic Violence
courts.

The latest addition is the Tax Court, which has been established to cater for tax-related issues.

In
an interview with the Daily Graphic on the sidelines of a two-day
training programme for judges on taxation in Accra, Justice Kumar
described Ghana’s judiciary as pragmatic and among the few judiciaries
in developing countries that had established tax courts.

Workshop

The
training workshop was organised by the Judicial Training Institute
(JTI) in collaboration with the Chartered Institute of Taxation, Ghana
to equip the participants with new skills to efficiently tackle tax
issues in their various courts.

Justice Kumar took the
participants through international tax regimes, shared India’s
experiences with the participants and pointed out the mistakes and
successes of the Indian system.

Topics treated included: Basics
of international taxation; A typical tax treaty and its various clauses;
Introduction to transfer pricing; Pricing concepts and theory, and
Practical real life experiences on tax issues.

Addressing
the opening session of the workshop, a Supreme Court Judge, Mr Justice
Jones Victor M. Dotse, tasked the participants to actively participate
in the training sessions and make the appropriate recommendations if
they found a vacuum in the tax laws of the country.

“We need
revenue to sustain the economy and any reform geared towards raising
more revenue for the country will be welcome,” Justice Dotse stated.

He
advised the participants to form a core group of trainers of trainees
in order to share what they learnt during the training with other
justices.

A Justice of the Court of Appeal, Mrs Justice Margaret
Welbourne, said the workshop provided the opportunity for the justices
to indicate what was expected of tax officers in the country.

“We
will come out with recommendations on reforming some of the regulations
and laws and also hope to build the capacity of judges,” she added.

Tax Court

The
President of the Chartered Institute of Taxation, Ghana, Mr Mike Kofi
Afflu, said the institute mooted the idea of the establishment of
special tax courts and expressed gratitude to the Chief Justice and the
Judicial Service for accepting the idea.

He said with the
discovery of oil and gas in commercial quantities in Ghana, it was
important for the country to brace itself in a way that would prevent
multinational companies from taking advantage of the system to evade
tax.

“We hope to equip judges with skills to assist the tax
courts to be able to properly adjudicate over tax cases for the benefit
of the country,” he said.

For his part, an Assistant Commissioner
of the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA), Mr Cephas Odartey, said it was
the desire of the GRA to raise more revenue for government programmes
and was hopeful that the training would help to achieve that objective.